UK's Anti-Porn Filtering Being Handled By A Chinese Company

from the we-didn't-want-to-appear-censorious-so-we-outsourced-it dept

UK Prime Minister David Cameron's anti-porn activities have been well detailed here recently, including his insistence that search engines enable child pornography and that ISP-level porn filtering should be on by default. Despite lacking the comprehension of the technology he's regulating or the inherent limitations of his proposals, Cameron has boldly moved on into the porn-free future, all the while claiming these moves have nothing to do with government censorship.

(We can also start taking bets on whether "opting in" to porn [by contacting your ISP and asking to be placed on the perv list] will have an effect on UK divorce rates -- after all, the filtering begins at the pipe and isn't something you can have available on some devices but not others. Let the awkward conversations begin!)

On Monday the Prime Minister said TalkTalk had shown "great leadership" in setting up its system, Homesafe, which it has offered to customers since 2011.

TalkTalk told the BBC it was comfortable with its relationship with Huawei, and that the service was very popular.

Homesafe is a voluntary scheme which allows subscribers to select categories - including social media, gambling and pornography - that they want blocked.

Customers who do not want filtering still have their traffic routed through the system, but matches to Huawei's database are dismissed rather than acted upon.

That's right. Huawei, a Chinese firm, is performing the actual filtering for UK web traffic. No one knows filtering better than the originators of the Internet Great Firewall, and even though Huawei is not a state-run company, due to its nationality, there will always be questions as to its overall allegiance. Huawei, to its credit, has been very open about its operations and has invited critics, including the US government itself, to investigate it if it thinks Huawei's such a threat to national security.

The committee said "the alleged links between Huawei and the Chinese State are concerning, as they generate suspicion as to whether Huawei's intentions are strictly commercial or are more political" - but added that it had not found any evidence of wrongdoing.

So, it's more or less above board, apparently. Should UK citizens be concerned their web traffic is being filtered by a company from a filter-heavy nation? Or should they be more concerned that control over content is being handed to a third-party private corporation rather than an independent organization that would be ultimately accountable to Parliament? Either way, it doesn't seem like this revelation will endear the new filtering system to the British public.

TalkTalk certainly recognizes the potential downside of this relationship as is evidenced by some earlier tap dancing it did around the subject.

Initially, TalkTalk told the BBC that it was US security firm Symantec that was responsible for maintaining its blacklist, and that Huawei only provided the hardware, as previously reported.

However, Symantec said that while it had been in a joint venture with Huawei to run Homesafe in its early stages, it had not been involved for over a year.

TalkTalk later confirmed it is Huawei that monitors activity, checking requests against its blacklist of over 65 million web addresses, and denying access if there is a match.

Interesting. While it's unfair to declare Huawei synonymous with the Chinese government, it's not unfair to question why the politicians pushing for this filtering system weren't more concerned about who would be handling the dirty job and perhaps steered the monitoring away from a contractor that would give the system the appearance of being more censorious than it is already.

But not to worry, Cameron's keeping an eye on the whole thing:

Mr Cameron said that the actions of ISPs would be monitored to ensure filtering is done correctly.

What.

The ISPs are being forced to implement this filtering. They're not in charge of "doing" the filtering. The actual filtering is being done by third parties, one of which is a Chinese company. It looks as if Cameron's more concerned ISPs might treat some customers like adults and flip the switch without making them fill out the appropriate "I HEART PORN" paperwork (which may include divorce papers), or just wants to be in a position to pounce if someone's underage eyes catch a glimpse of x-rated skin.

Giving the appearance that the UK government is hiring censors to help with its censorship apparently isn't as much of a concern.

Re: Re: Tiananmen Square

Honestly, that sort of fear mongering is both detrimental and absurd. Huawei is a multi national company that has it's head quarters in China. They also have offices right here in the US. Link Apple products are also made in China as well as Cisco, in all reality it's hard to find an electronic product without some manufacturing in China. With the recent Snowden announcements, China themselves are suggesting that we are spying on their companies/universities for trade secrets, but at least they have proof. Given, I will say Huawei was fined for copyright infringement and patent violations for using Cisco's code and design in 2003, and I think there was some other cases against them.

this censoring is just the start. i have no doubt whatsoever that there will be expansion so the democracy in the UK is going to disappear. in doing so, it will take away freedom of choice, freedom of speech, freedom to privacy amongst other things. it is also going to criminalise all those that want to 'opt out' of the filtering because as soon as there is any sex-related crime' near to where those people live, there will be knocks on the door from the police. it doesn't matter what Cameron says, this is going down the same road as any country that has censorship. the ridiculous things are that
a) he says people can still choose which publications they buy, without having porn banned at bookstalls etc
b) the porn he wants to stop is going to be forced underground further because those that are into this stuff dont search the internet in conventional ways
c)the job of finding, catching and convicting those involved in this stuff is going to be much harder, not just for UK police forces but for International forces as well. leaving it alone, out in the open gave them a chance. that will soon be gone
this is just adding to the censorship that is already taking place in the UK, brought on by the stupid claims of the US entertainment industries. they refuse to compete with all aspects of the internet, preferring to kill it off completely. i cannot believe the mentality of some people!

Am I alone in thinking that Huawei was deemed "suspicious" was because either they didn't want to play nice with the NSA, or the fear that if they knew what it meant to play nice with the NSA would reveal more information to the Chinese government than the NSA wanted them to know?

Re:

Killing the competition

An interesting thing I discovered when helping a woman in China try to get to various websites was that her ISP was filtering far more sites than the official firewall required be filtered. Many of them were service providers that had competitors in China. So if you have a business competitor it may be in your interest to send a polite inquiry to the filter company as to how much it would cost to get your competitor on the blacklist. Since the filters aren't perfect you have excellent plausible deniability for this, too.

Do they also know what you are viewing?

Think of the children!

In my country we have internet censorship ostensibly for the eradication of porn. Of course, porn seems to include anti government sites, blogs, and even some file sharing sites.

Now, as I'm rather opposed to having my browsing curtailed, I obviously use VPNs and proxies to get around it. Of course, many of these give you porn pop ups. As a fairly conservative muslim woman, I'm not particularly happy to have live Jasmine popping up every time I want to check the news...but I live with it.

However, I know there are kids running around with such software on their USBs sharing it amongst themselves (every one at my school knew how to circumvent the school's firewall and when the gov censorship came into play we all knew how to get around it within a week, my younger brother tells me it's the same at his school) and the fact of the matter is, I'm sure far more children have been exposed to porn simply because of this censorship.

Why not just have parents turn on Google safe search? It's about as effective...

Re: Think of the children!

If you want your kid to surf the net without any dangers the first and most important step is to be WITH your kids while they surf. If by any chance some porn pops-up act like a grown up adult and explain what is happening and why the kid should not be accessing that at this early age.

What you said is true. Kids will get exposed to porn sooner or later. No amount of filtering will ever be enough. Why not let the parents do the parenting?

Re: Re: Think of the children!

But, that would require work, it would mean that parents would have to... interact with their children, rather than just dumping an electronic device in their hands or in front of them and forgetting about them!

Re: Think of the children!

I recommend pop-up blockers. There are very few sites that will tell you anything important on a pop-up anyway.

Here in the US, all the databases are managed by Christian morality organizations, so that anti-gay hate sites remain accessible while academic sites on Satanism (or radical-left sites or sites critical of Christianity) are blocked.

There's a lot of the Scunthorpe effect, and it hasn't changed much over time despite our awareness.

During the reign of the Communications Decency Act, it was a swanky rebellion to add a porn block (usually a love scene from classic literature) to the bottom of your emails.

I recommend the Fifty Shades Generator. Below, since I'm too lazy to make a proper anchor.

filtering

UK Loves Obummer

Mainly because Cameron and Obummer are buddies. This keeps Cameron traveling to the US often so he can't mess things up in the UK as much. I guess he hasn't been able to come to the US as often (maybe because Obummer has been busy on vacation so much).

Re:

Well if there is anyone who knows how to censor things it's China. The irony here is astounding in that U.K Government will throw the stop sign up at Huawei over security concerns but allows them to run the sensor filter.

The mere fact that the Obama administration seem to be controlled by the MPAA and RIAA when it comes to copyright protectionism and has used that to force other countries to comply with Hollywood's copyright enforcement demands is starting to get ridiculous.

Britans citizen should be allowed to make their choice of wther they want to see porn or not, lord knows they don't need big nanny government to force a ban on those who don't want it.

What's next, telling people the missionary position is the only government authorised position unless it's tax time then your allowed to bend over and take it?

The mere fact that the U.K. government is even considering this is pure stupidity. I recall an effort to ban porn happened in the U.S. in the 90's by some politicians wife, and the porn industry banded together to fight it in the court and a lobbying effort.

People that don't want to look at porn wont, and those that want to keep their family at home from looking at it can filter it by blocking sites and content on their computer.

Yes I know there are ways to circumvent this, but honestly, if your looking for it, you will find it, if your not trying to, you wont. We don't need the government doing it for us.

I am amazed at the effort they are putting into this, if they put this much effort into all the financial crime hitting business and consumers with botnets malware etc etc a good chunk would be gone.

They can pressure other countries to enforce copyright laws, but cant do squat to get the guys behind finacial crimes like payment processor hacks, and what not.

Re: "... nothing to do with government censorship. "

There are technical questions as to what should be blocked. IPs? Domains? Subdomains? URIs? Given how the internet works it is almost impossible to block at a level that won't either block far too much or far too little.

Does anybody have an idea on what level such a block would have to be implemented to work?

And what about as-of-yet unrated content? Is it a whitelist or a blacklist? In the first case no new content will get past the filter without hours of delay, in the second case the offending content could be reposted regularly to circuvent the filter.